The free Mobile Mouse app changes your smartphone into a keyboard and mouse. The paid version adds media and browser buttons, an application launcher, and a basic file explorer to the mix.

For all the talk about a “post-PC” world, most people use smartphones or tablets as an addition to their existing technological arsenal. They are not typically replacements for a standard laptop or desktop. In fact, there are a number of ways to combine the capabilities of your PC and mobile devices that can make your tablet or smartphone even more powerful. So far in this continuing series, we took a look at an app that would let you use your iPad as a second monitor and one that would turn iOS into a mobile file server. This week, we'll talk about how to control your computer using only your phone.

The keyboard and mouse are two of computing's most longstanding conventions. While hardware has gotten exponentially smaller and faster and software has evolved from the alphabet soup of MS-DOS into shiny, sophisticated graphical operating systems, our primary methods of input haven't changed much. With the right chain of adapters, one could plausibly use things like the original Microsoft Mouse or the Apple Extended Keyboard with today's systems.

Today's computers have migrated to places where even keyboards and mice aren't always welcome, though. Home theater PCs raise the "where am I going to put this keyboard while I'm not using it?" question, and to put a keyboard and mouse with a projector-connected computer in a meeting area or classroom is to ask someone to disconnect it and walk off with it. Given the increasing ubiquity of smartphones, it's both less obtrusive and more convenient to let people control these computers with something small that they're guaranteed to have on their person anyway. Enter Mobile Mouse, an iOS and Android app that can serve as a keyboard and mouse for any PC, Mac, or Linux box.

Configuring Mobile Mouse Server

Like the SplashTop XDisplay app we examined a couple of weeks ago, Mobile Mouse requires a free piece of "server" software to be installed on any computer you want to control with it. You can download clients for Windows, Ubuntu, and older versions of OS X from the Mobile Mouse website. Snow Leopard and Lion users can grab it from the Mac App Store. The application uses Bonjour to allow your phone and computer to find each other on a network, and the Mobile Mouse Server will automatically install the Bonjour package on Windows computers during setup.

Assigning a password for security and changing pointer settings is all done using the server software.

Once you install the client, the default settings will start it up when the computer starts and make it easy to find and connect when searching from the Mobile Mouse app. If you'd like to disable automatic startup, change the default port number, assign a password, and change the mouse pointer speed, you can do all of that in the settings window.

Keyboard shortcuts and individual applications can be mapped to both hotkeys and multitouch gestures. Hotkeys are the more reliable option by a long shot.

Digging further into the options, you can also assign hotkeys or multitouch gestures to perform complicated keyboard shortcuts or launch specific programs. I had trouble getting multitouch gestures to work consistently—whether that's due to my iPhone's 3.5" screen, my relatively large fingers, the app itself, or some combination of the three is anyone's guess. But it's definitely less reliable than Apple's multitouch trackpads, for example.

Using Mobile Mouse

Once the server software has been installed, download the client app to your phone and start it up. It will automatically discover all of the computers on your network that are running the software, but you can also input IP addresses and port numbers manually if you'd like. Tap the computer you want to connect to, type in the password if it has one, and you can begin using the app.

By default the screen is divided in half, with the onscreen keyboard (which includes some OS-specific keys like the Windows key for PCs and the Command key for Macs) on the bottom and the trackpad on top. Shaking your phone or flipping it to landscape mode minimizes the keyboard and lets you use the entire screen as a trackpad. As you switch windows, the name of the current program will briefly appear on the phone's screen so that you don't lose track of where you are, or accidentally quit a program you didn't intend to quit.

The Mobile Mouse app will find any computer on your network running the server software.

The free Mobile Mouse app allows you to use your phone's screen as both a touchpad and a keyboard, which is as much as some people will need. The Mobile Mouse Pro app ($1.99 on iOS, $2.99 on Android) is what really makes everything interesting, though. It adds specialized controls for media players and Web browsing, a simple file browser, and even an application launcher. Tapping the down arrow above the keyboard will expose these specialized key layouts.

Mobile Mouse's media player controls. These work both with the built-in media players as well as third-party players like VLC.

The Web browsing button layout, shown here, works with both built-in and third-party browsers as well.

These specialized button layouts (and the program's wide cross-platform availability) are what make Mobile Mouse better than other apps that promise similar functionality. Remote Mouse, for example, supports iOS, Android, Windows, and OS X, but doesn't feature support for Linux and only includes keyboard and mouse features. It's important to have something that can work with as many computers and phones as possible while maintaining maximum versatility, especially if you're considering using this in a business. Mobile Mouse does a pretty good job of hitting those marks.

I ran into a situation where I needed to use my phone as a trackpad, and was able to utilize the software that Logitech has for that purpose. This, however, looks much more full-featured, I will have to check it out.

One thing I wasn't fond of with Logitech's software is the lag between input and action on-screen. Now, I was using it on our corporate network; that said, it is a very well managed LAN with really good throughput for normal networking tasks, so I don't know if the bottleneck was in the phone (4Gs), the LAN, or my work laptop (which is a smoking pile of shit).

This looks like a very nice software, but I do not get their business strategy because there is no link on their website to the paid version of the app and I would like to see a nice table with a comparison of the features of the paid product versus the free product.

On a side note, the Privacy Policy and the Terms of Use are unavailable. Maybe we are buying a very nice key logger.

What I would like are apps that have nice UI and usability like this, but don't require a "server" running on the host. They should just present themselves as plain bluetooth HID devices. Client-server is probably easier to implement though, no need to figure out bluetooth.

There are some apps that do exactly just that, runs on BT and are just HID devices, but the interface leaves a lot to be desired.

The intersection of people with great UI design skills, and people who are capable of developing a BT-speaking device is probably very slim.

I'm confused here: most modern phones(even some surprisingly terrible ones, and certainly a healthy percentage of the iOS/Android ones that would even run this application) have bluetooth capability and pretty much all can connect to a USB bus as one or more devices, depending on their settings.

Given that, isn't sending mouse events to proprietary, nonstandard, client software over TCP/IP kind of insane? Or are these handsets too locked-down or non-standard for an application to add USB/BT HID without some sort of fairly deep hackery?

I'm not familiar with the iOS field; but I know that Android phones that I've dealt with are <em>definitely</em> not fixed-function on either USB or BT. Depending on what is switched on or off, plugging one into a USB port will expose a mass storage device, an ADB interface, a cell modem of some kind, a USB network device, etc.

The ability to show up as a USB or BT HID mouse/keyboard combination, while obviously not a terribly pleasant prospect for daily use compared to even a basic plastic cheapy pack-in set, would be quite convenient. Needing a nonstandard client on the PC and a network route from phone to PC seems to largely spoil the utility...

This is a good app for your HTPC, or any PC where you work a long distance from the actual box. I wish it over Wi-fi and there is basically no detectable lag at all. In fact it's more responsive than my RF mouse and keyboard.

I have been using the software since it first came out all buggy and such. It is rare however that I find my self in front of a monitor without keyboard and mouse.

For most practical purposes, when I really want to do remote work from my IOS device, I want to be using a VNC client tunneled over ssh. The problem is that the built in MAC VNC server does not do tunneling and I need a third party app.

Please write an article about VNC + SSH tunnel that can be run over the Wifi/Cellular Network.

The RealVNC solution is a bit pricy on the server side, but it has a really smooth interface. iSSH has a stuttering interface sometimes, but it works over 3G and is a lot cheaper.

I've been using Mobile Mouse for a few years with my Windows 7 Media Center PC. Key observations:

No lag that I've ever noticed. The cursor is crisp and responsive.

It runs as a application that launches when you log in, not as a system service. So you can't use it until you've already logged in with another input device.

And apparently because it doesn't integrate as a system device, it doesn't work at all if you get any kind of UAC prompt in Windows. So while I have my media center PC set to automatically log in to a user account (with user rights, not an administrative account), if I need to go into the sound card controls, install a software update, etc, I have to fish out a hardware keyboard.

So with that said, it still works quite well and I use it as the primary method for controlling my media center PC, but it's a shame that the Windows version is slightly halfassed in its implementation.

This looks like a very nice software, but I do not get their business strategy because there is no link on their website to the paid version of the app and I would like to see a nice table with a comparison of the features of the paid product versus the free product.

On a side note, the Privacy Policy and the Terms of Use are unavailable. Maybe we are buying a very nice key logger.

The paid version is in the App Store...this is not a keylogger. Hopefully you have a firewall on your router though.

I've been using Mobile Mouse for a few years with my Windows 7 Media Center PC. Key observations:

No lag that I've ever noticed. The cursor is crisp and responsive.

It runs as a application that launches when you log in, not as a system service. So you can't use it until you've already logged in with another input device.

And apparently because it doesn't integrate as a system device, it doesn't work at all if you get any kind of UAC prompt in Windows. So while I have my media center PC set to automatically log in to a user account (with user rights, not an administrative account), if I need to go into the sound card controls, install a software update, etc, I have to fish out a hardware keyboard.

So with that said, it still works quite well and I use it as the primary method for controlling my media center PC, but it's a shame that the Windows version is slightly halfassed in its implementation.

I use TouchPad from Edovia (http://edovia.com) for controlling our Macs from the couch when they are plugged in to the TV. It’s well-designed, and works great. It costs $3.99, but (a) doesn’t require a separate application on the host computer and (b) is a universal app, so with one purchase it runs on both the iPhone and iPad.

I do find the application launcher in Mobile Mouse interesting, though.

I've really been meaning to look into an app like this. I have a bluetooth keyboard/trackpad to use from the couch on my HTPC and it flakes out WAY too often.

I have done a little looking on similar apps but haven't tried anything yet. I guess the server definitely adds some cool additional functionality -- I'm wondering how much more reliable that is vs. the apps that hack up things to present the phone as an actual bluetooth trackpad / keyboard.

Why don't any of these offer any type of encryption? I would never let someone use this at the office simply because of that, all your keystrokes are just flying around waiting for someone to sniff them out of the air.. Maybe OK for my home network but not at the office..

When I read the title of the article, to use your phone as a mouse, I was expecting an app that uses the accelerometers so you could slide your phone on the desk like a mouse.

What would be the point ? A wireless mouse costs about 10 times less than an iPhone and would work much better. And iPhone/iPad, however, makes a nice touchpad replacement.

Personally, I like Air Display better because it allows me to do more but I must say that I'm in love with the idea of "sliding" a document from my PC to my tablet and go for a ride with it (well, as far as our WIFI will take me, anyway). I've used Air Mouse for a couple of years now but, beside the novelty, I must admit I never found any goos use case for it.

Been using this for a year or so for my HTPC or when I need an alternate keyboard/mouse for my main PC in a pinch and it's fantastic. The responsiveness, for me, is instant with no lag. The scroll "wheel" is especially impressive for a network remote. A newer feature they added awhile ago is a "click lock" (for lack of a better term) that locks the pointer to the object under it for things like dragging a window that requires you lift your finger off the screen.

One thing not mentioned in the article is that it also has an air mouse mode that utilizes the accelerometers, which again works surprisingly well for a network remote.

I'm confused here: most modern phones(even some surprisingly terrible ones, and certainly a healthy percentage of the iOS/Android ones that would even run this application) have bluetooth capability and pretty much all can connect to a USB bus as one or more devices, depending on their settings.

Given that, isn't sending mouse events to proprietary, nonstandard, client software over TCP/IP kind of insane? Or are these handsets too locked-down or non-standard for an application to add USB/BT HID without some sort of fairly deep hackery?

The Bluetooth stack in these devices is not complete. And since they are locked down, you cannot have access to the ability of the phone to mimic an HID device over Bluetooth. A rooted device (on Android, anyway) is different. I've seen apps on the Android Play Store that allow rooted devices to mimic a full HID device without running external software on the computer.

That said,... a Rii keyboard/touchpad/IR remote combo is about $45 US,... and provides 99% of what your need in a full BT or wireless keyboard & mouse combo. Plus the Rii is small, rechargeable, IR programmable, and requires no modification to phone, tablet, or computer, nor does it require lending your phone or tablet to allow friends and family to change channels, etc.

Same old terminal services client software method variant that has been around for years...... A new name for VNC, RDP, NX, and a host of others? Nothing new. Used my old Palm pda as a keyboard/monitor combo for years.

Does anyone make something like this that will let me use my android phone as a keyboard and mouse for another android device? I've been poking around on the web but no one seems to make such a thing. Granted that might be a teeny-tiny market. I have a phone with a physical keyboard and would love tobe able to use that as the keyboard for my tablet (rather than getting a bluetooth one).

I have just tried this out, It is very buggy. I have not got it to work yet. After reading a few comments here I will try out Logitech's touch mouse despite its lag issues. I was not aware Logitech had made an app yet. Logitech usually makes great low cost peripherals.

Its also possible it is just my phone is a piece of trash. I have the LG G2X dual core. I have been so unhappy with it. T mobiles warranty is useless. GPS does not work on it and the speaker or head phone is barely audible. Supposedly this is suppose to be a good phone.

I'm confused here: most modern phones(even some surprisingly terrible ones, and certainly a healthy percentage of the iOS/Android ones that would even run this application) have bluetooth capability and pretty much all can connect to a USB bus as one or more devices, depending on their settings.

Given that, isn't sending mouse events to proprietary, nonstandard, client software over TCP/IP kind of insane? Or are these handsets too locked-down or non-standard for an application to add USB/BT HID without some sort of fairly deep hackery?

The Bluetooth stack in these devices is not complete. And since they are locked down, you cannot have access to the ability of the phone to mimic an HID device over Bluetooth. A rooted device (on Android, anyway) is different. I've seen apps on the Android Play Store that allow rooted devices to mimic a full HID device without running external software on the computer.

That said,... a Rii keyboard/touchpad/IR remote combo is about $45 US,... and provides 99% of what your need in a full BT or wireless keyboard & mouse combo. Plus the Rii is small, rechargeable, IR programmable, and requires no modification to phone, tablet, or computer, nor does it require lending your phone or tablet to allow friends and family to change channels, etc.

I have one of those, too. Granted, I don't use it much because when I want something like that, I have my phone with me and it's already set up. However, it is a very handy device, if only a little cheap feeling in the hand.

I was thinking of writing something like this for my Nexus tablet so I could use it to select media to stream from my PC to my TV. Looks like I can skip the programming step and just start enjoying my home theater.

For use in a business, I think a slides remote would have been handy, for the PowerPoint presentations and so on. Does this program have that?

It has basic presentation controls (start, previous and next), but you can buy the full feature set as an add-on. In that case you get a slide picker, access to slide notes and such… Never tried it, though, so I dont know how well it works.Does work great for when I have my MBP connected to the TV, though! I use it together with an Apple wireless KB since I have one, and a physical keyboard is always better, but the built-in one works like a charm for light typing/searching.Just for fun, I'm writing this from my iPhone

I use a different piece of software for this called HippoRemote. HippoRemote uses VNC for its control capability, which also allows it to work with a hacked AppleTV 2. This is rather handy when you need to disable (or enable) subtitles in XBMC and you're stuck using the ill-equipped ATV remote. If I remember correctly, HippoRemote does have a free and paid version. I think the paid version just comes with extra native app support such as XBMC commands.